Chapter 11
Canto
Diablos has decided after three days to dump us in a village and test us. I am not amused in the least. I fold my arms over my chest and watch the humans bustling around, selling their wares.
It’s some kind of market. There’s music and food. It reminds me of a place where I grew up before I was taken to study the art of war. I avoid places like this. They bring back memories of before.
I’m not proud of who I am. My parents were horrified when they came to see me and saw that I’d become nothing but a killer. I think they would be even more disgusted now.
The witch grumbles and whips her head around, moving too fast, unnaturally fast. I study her for a moment and realise what it is.
I’ve seen young Fae when they walk into a battle with the same look.
Everything is overwhelming her. There are too many sounds that are too loud, too many smells.
All their feelings are in full speed, making it hard to concentrate and focus. This place is dangerous.
I could let her flounder.
I should.
Instead, I speed up so I can walk beside her.
It’s not mercy. It’s pity. It’s strategic.
“Focus on something that you know. One thing that can ground you. The rest is background noise.”
Her chest rises and falls too fast; her hands fist at her sides.
“Leaf and Diablos are here. I am here. There is no danger.” I keep my voice low and moderated, confident but soothing.
She leans towards me, probably without even realising. This witch with all the different facets of herself confuses me. But this version is one that reaches to the younger me, and I feel a kinship with her. I know what she’s feeling because I felt it, too.
Ronit is staring at me, but I ignore him. If she loses her mind, everyone here will die. This is practical. This is…okay. I feel bad for her, but I’m never going to admit any of it. These are my issues.
Brio, Lirin, and Reed arrange themselves around us. Though Reed gives me a look of disgust.
“They are humans; you can stab them anywhere, and they will die. You are perfectly safe here. No Demons, no Nightmares, no Fae. Just our weird party.” My soft murmurs reach her ears only.
Slowly, she starts to calm.
I’ve seen so many different versions of her, but this lost and small version is my least favourite. It seems so fundamentally wrong for her to be like this.
She’s barely making a sound, her movements are small. I hate it, and I don’t understand why.
“Would you like to buy your beautiful omega a necklace?”
Ronit chokes on the water he was drinking. “I’m sorry, auld woman, but what?”
“Auld woman?” she says in a huff. “I’m not so old!” To be fair, her hair is grey, her skin a wrinkled map, and she is bent over. She is old for humans.
“Uh, worldly woman? Decrepit human?”
She growls, and Ronit blinks, looking completely out of his element. He wasn’t made for small talk. He and I were born to cut the bodies of our enemies upon the fields of war.
“Sorry, he’s a bit flustered. We normally keep him locked up,” Lirin says charmingly.
She beams at him. Most people do. Lirin has all the people skills that the rest of us lack. Charming, innocent, without ghosts. Not to say he has none, just that he can hide them better.
“How are you today, miss?”
She giggles and blushes like she’s young instead of with one foot in her grave.
“I’m good, better now. Would you like to buy a necklace for your lovely lady friend?”
Leaf snorts, folds his arms, and steps in front of the witch. “Mine!”
The woman looks between them, confused by his sudden claiming.
“You really are the perfect pack. You look so beautiful together.”
I think the five of us snap our heads towards the woman in perfect synchronization.
“No, we’re not-”
“Here, just give it to her later when you take her out to dinner. She looks a little stressed. Poor thing. You have a gorgeous pack, darling, even if the giant is a bit scary.”
And I’m not?!
The woman presses the necklace into Lirin’s hand. He looks at Ronit, who motions with his hand to just let it go. She pats his cheek and then ambles off, her bulk swaying as she moves.
People move around us. I grab Leaf and pull him in front of her, yank her wrist up to his back and wrap her fingers around the fabric. I’m thoroughly out of patience with all of them.
“Hold on to him.”
“I don’t need-”
“Don’t be inconvenient. We don’t have the time to baby you. Leaf is wide enough and weird enough that everyone will get out of his way.” Why am I explaining? “Just do it.”
She bristles, but she doesn’t let go of his shirt, and when we start walking, she follows the motions of his body as if they were already in tune.
Diablos and Hartley have disappeared, but this test will continue until we fail or figure out what’s wrong. I’m not a fan of tests, but already, I’m starting to filter through what it could be.
The details flood my mind. A woman in pink with flour on her nose, smiling widely and fluttering her lashes at the tall man.
The tall man has a hand in his pocket. Is he hiding a weapon or something less sinister?
No, he’s leaning into the woman, everything about him says interest. He’s flirting.
A moment later, he pulls out his phone, and she takes it.
Courting.
I dismiss them, noting that there are lots of banners and scraps of material with hand-painted and printed designs and letters flapping.
A man is doing an acrobatic display while a massive group of people ooh and ah.
There are stalls with food, I pass one with weapons, but the man who is selling them is sitting in a chair with a hat over his eyes and is sound asleep.
What is it that we are meant to be seeing?
A group of children run past, but a girl stops. She looks like she might be seven. This child zeroes in on Ronit, her eyes getting bigger and rounder.
“Who are you?”
He blinks down at the tiny child. She fluffs her blond hair and scowls at the rest of us like we better not dare intrude on her private conversation with him.
“Ronit.”
“Ron.”
“Ron-it!” my alpha emphasizes.
“Ron.”
He sighs. “Fine. What’s your name? Where are your parents?”
“I’m Cassidy, and my parents are gone,” she whispers sadly.
“Gone?” Ronit asks, snapping to attention.
Mei lets go of Leaf and wanders past, bumping into the tiny child. I glare at her, wondering what she’s even thinking.
“Hey, watch it, lady!”
Mei turns towards the sound and puts out long fingers tipped with black claws. “What are you, small thing?”
“A child!” Cassidy snaps in outrage.
Mei sways on the spot, shifting her weight from one foot and back again. She doesn’t agree nor disagree. She is silent and suddenly one of the most dangerous creatures I’ve ever met.
The girl’s clothes are very new, but not dirty, even though she was running around.
I glance at Reed, who is watching the child with predatory interest.
Is this our test?
Ronit crouches. “Where have your parents gone?”
“They just,” the child flutters her hand dismissively, “went elsewhere.”
“And left you alone?” Ronit says with a dark thread of violence in his voice.
Ronit threw his life away when he discovered that he had orders to kill children. They are his weakness. I need to talk to him, separate him from it.
“Well, duh.”
Mei snags the child by the hair and lifts her off her feet, shaking her violently.
“What are you doing? Stop it!” A man shouts and rushes towards us.
More screams come from all around us.
Should we interfere? No.
“Don’t!” I say to Reed, who moves to intercept the humans. “Just watch.”
The man attacks Mei with a desperate fury. Leaf sends him flying. Chaos explodes around us as people charge in, trying to save the child Mei is hissing at.
People throw things at her. A man tries to tackle her. She moves too quickly, too aggressively. The child is a rag doll in her hands.
“Mei!” Ronit commands. “Put the child down.”
Mei shakes it even harder, and it goes limp.
“MEI!” Ronit screams.
“Oh, God, she killed her. What’s wrong with you?” The necklace woman cries out. “You’re a monster.”
Mei ignores everyone, she continues shaking the body of that child, and for the first time, I get this sick feeling that we made a mistake. Did Mei actually kill a human child? I step towards her, but she whirls away from both me and Ronit, who looks like he might actually kill her this time.
“Let that child go!” Ronit commands, his voice hoarse and filled with ghosts.
She falters, her fingers relax, just for a second, but there is something about the fact that she almost obeyed him that triggers some hidden piece of knowledge. I don’t have time, so I shove it aside.
I lunge towards her, but she whirls and kicks me in the balls, bringing me to my knees.
“Show yourself!” Mei snarls.
The girl is white. She’s not breathing.
“Strega, what the hell have you done?” Lirin shouts. “Let the human child go!”
She ignores everyone and gives one more violent shake. The head of the child snaps up, but it’s the wrong shape, it’s almost cone like. Its eyes are milky, and there’s almost no colour in them, and when the girl, Cassidy, opens her mouth, it’s full of serrated teeth.
The crowd draws back, horrified.
Mei snarls and draws a rune on its forehead, and it falls asleep. She lets it drop to the ground, standing tall as the crowd draws back, staring at her in horror. Mei stands alone, silent and sneering, furious at all of us.
I don’t blame her.
Diablos and Hartley are watching from a wall not far away, and judging from their expressions, we failed.
We failed this mission spectacularly.
Mei swipes her hair back and throws the sleeping Nightmare creature to Ronit.
“Your human child, Siren,” she says scornfully.
He blinks, but for the first time that I’ve ever been able to witness, Ronit is speechless.
Mei sketches a rune in the air and disappears. Leaf lunges forward, but she’s gone. He whirls on us.
“Couldn’t you smell the rot? Couldn’t you see past the disguise? How were you that blind?”
No, we couldn’t see it because we got caught up letting the fact that it was a child distract us from the fact that we were here to do a job.
Fuck.
Leaf lunges into a portal and disappears with a wave of ocean water. He can do that? I stare at the spot, even more startled.
“He can open the portal to the Black Death Oceans?” My mind is reeling.
I walk over to Diablos. Waiting for his fury to spill over. This time, we deserve it.
“That went rather well, don’t you think?” he says in absolute disdain.
“We made a mistake.”
“Oh, don’t bullshit me, Siren. You made repeated mistakes.
One, you didn’t look, you didn’t see. You ignore the obvious clues.
When your nightmare teammate indicated that there was a creature in the human skin, you let humans attack her, then you tried to attack her.
And then, to top it off, you didn’t even apologise or make good.
You just left her to face the fear and scorn of the people she had just saved. ”
I stare at the furious demon, hearing the long list of things I had just fucked up. For a moment, I’m back in the barracks, getting my ass handed to me.
Shit.
“Was that really the job?”
“Yes, that was the test. I knew about the demon and was going to come and swing by to sort it out. The creature feeds on dream energy, the worse the dreams, the happier and stronger it is. It has been making this village miserable.”
I make a low noise in the back of my throat.
“Why did it come up to Ronit?”
“Well, I thought it was arrogance, but I think it probably sensed me or Mei and decided a nice strong Siren would be good protection,” Diablos says mockingly.
Hartley is silent, his arms folded over his chest.
“What?” I snarl at him.
“In the force, you have to have your partners back. It’s the only way it will work out.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. My head aches.
“You are stronger together,” Diablos says evenly as if he hasn’t said it a million times.
“You are almost the perfect team, strength meets skill, meets knowledge. If you would just open up your eyes, if you would get past your damn prejudices, you would see that Mei could be the thing that saves you.”
“She is the one who damned us,” I say coldly.
“Did she, though?” Diablos snarls. “I thought about that. When I went and researched her, I spoke to many beings, old and young. Mei doesn’t seek out trouble; she just survives.
She’s not vindictive or cruel. So, the question that sat in my mind all this time was: what upset Mei so much that she set your skies on fire? Did even one of you stop to ask that?”
“Of course, we did.”
But that’s not true. We assumed the witch was a dumb animal, all instincts and animal urges. Why would she have a reason or a motive for what happened?
Unease swirls in my gut.
“Think it through, Siren. Your salvation. Or your undoing. You get to choose.”
With that, Hartley and Diablos disappear, leaving us alone in this fucked-up village with a girl-shaped demon, an angry crowd of people, and this weight that feels far too much like guilt pressing me down.